


Machiavelli and the Art of War (The Devil's in the Details)

by sinaddict



Category: Point Pleasant
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-01
Updated: 2006-05-01
Packaged: 2017-10-07 18:08:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/67788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinaddict/pseuds/sinaddict
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucifer despises being bored.  And Boyd is never boring.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Machiavelli and the Art of War (The Devil's in the Details)

**I.**

Hell is not, nor has it ever been, a democracy.

If Lucas Boyd were smarter, he might have taken that into account more often, before voicing his vote on matters numerous and varied. As a dumb kid, it's what got him noticed, and amused, by his boss. Over the years, he's figured it's that same tendency to make himself heard that has kept him from going the way of Lucifer's many other assistants and project leaders.

Lucifer despises being bored.

And Boyd is never boring.

"Christina has a longer attention span than you do," Boyd mutters one morning, while attempting to give his boss a rundown of the status of various projects in the different areas of hell. His boss devotes roughly ninety seconds of attention to each before cutting him off to move onto the next matter, and even though Boyd has learned to cut these reports down to a concise ninety-three seconds-- solely to give Lucifer the impression that there's more coming-- it's somewhat annoying when Lucifer is more concerned about his Playstation 2 score than the state of the impending apocalypse.

"Honestly, Lucas," Lucifer begins distractedly, shifting as he attempts to make a clean getaway in Grand Theft Auto. "I have no need for a longer attention span. If the matter can not be resolved to my satisfaction, on my time table, it will be dealt with accordingly."

Impressively perfect speech for someone sprawled on the couch in leather pants, playing a video game.

Lucifer laughs before Boyd even finishes the thought. "What is hell for, if not hedonistic pleasures?"

"Business."

"You're far too business-minded," Lucifer says dismissively as he tosses the game controller aside and puts his feet up on the eight-thousand dollar coffee table. (Boyd knows the exact cost of every item in Lucifer's penthouse, summer house, Scottish castle, Italian villa, and various other places of residence. The vigilance is ingrained from a time ninety years ago when every dollar had to be stretched to the limit.) "So, Christina has a longer attention span than I do? How old is she, now? Two, three?"

"Fourteen. You have no concept of time."

"I have _my_ concept of time."

Boyd refrains from comment. _Barely_.

Lucifer laughs again, a deliciously rich sound that travels up and down Boyd's spine. "Lucas, I've lived longer than anyone on this little planet could possibly imagine. I have no need for your mortal constructs and descriptions. When you've been around as long as I have, you'll bore easily, as well."

   


**II.**

Lucifer has always taken a perverse amount of pleasure in going by 'Luc' for Earthly meetings of any kind, mostly because he finds it disturbingly amusing to have people introduced to him as such while Boyd is around. "Luc and Lucas," businessmen of all kinds manage to say with straight faces, despite the fact it makes the ultimate evil sound like a three-year-old with a twin brother.

Boyd learned long ago not to cringe, though, and now he just resigns himself to the fact that Lucifer has an odd sense of humor. "Luc and Lucas," Boyd shakes his head in the elevator after the latest meeting as Lucifer lounges against the opposite wall. "Whatever happened to Damien?"

"That horrid movie ruined it for me," Lucifer replies, sounding exceedingly put out about it. "I rather liked that identity, too. Lucas, find out who was responsible for that dreck and kill them."

Boyd nods. Apparently Lucifer has forgotten he gave the same order in a tantrum halfway through his first viewing of 'The Omen', which is why Boyd now tries to direct his boss's entertainment interests to less auspicious sources. Of course, that too has backfired on him rather spectacularly, but he supposes it's better to have Lucifer ridiculously addicted to melodramatic soap operas than ordering Boyd to kill everyone who makes films where the good guys win in the end. (Which Lucifer actually did one night in a rather spectacular tantrum fueled by copious amounts of alcohol and the other side winning a minor battle.)

Lucifer looks over at him suddenly, wicked smile spreading across his lips that can only mean trouble, and he says conversationally, "Do you know what we haven't done in an elevator in some time?" Even if Boyd didn't know, the fact that Lucifer begins unbuttoning his shirt while speaking would clue him in. "Hit the stop, Lucas."

For evil incarnate, Lucifer is surprisingly willing to cede control to Boyd in most things, but especially in this.

Boyd has never had any problems with taking that control when offered.

   


**III.**

Boyd was originally recruited by Lucifer's previous assistant. The first time he saw Lucifer was two years after his recruitment, when Lucifer strung his assistant up in the fourth circle of hell in a fit of pique and boredom. (Lucifer does not tolerate boredom well.) Boyd happened to be present at the time, and was the only one who didn't cower backward in fear of the Devil.

Lucifer eyed him critically for all of three seconds and told Boyd to follow him.

The first year or two, Boyd lived in fear of angering or annoying Lucifer in any way, more for Holly's sake than his own. He was the model employee, always available for any task Lucifer deemed necessary. It wasn't a giant leap for him to go down on his knees eight months into his reign as Lucifer's assistant. Honestly, Boyd hadn't thought much of it at the time. Lucifer had been bored-- _again_ \--and rather annoyed at some long-forgotten matter, and when Lucifer gave him that look and started unbuttoning his pants, Boyd hadn't hesitated in the least to give Lucifer what he obviously wanted.

He hadn't, however, expected to get off on it himself.

He suspects he probably wouldn't have if it had been anyone else.

Sometime into his second year of being Lucifer's assistant, the other side managed to get to somebody Lucifer had his eye on first, and even though the person in question hadn't been important past Lucifer's scheme of the moment to amuse himself, he had been infuriated at losing and took it out on anyone that crossed his path. Boyd had been off for the week, attempting to track down his wayward wife, who it turned out had been in New York City fucking an Italian immigrant who couldn't speak any English. By the time he returned to Hell, Lucifer had been in a rage that terrified the most staid of underlings.

Boyd had been too tired and pissed off to care.

Lucifer had been yelling at him about how good employees don't take vacation time in the middle of a crisis, and the whole mess with Holly just made Boyd snap, cut off Lucifer mid-sentence and told him that Boyd's status as an employee was a reflection of what kind of boss Lucifer was in the first place. In as many words, he told the ultimate evil to fuck off.

It made Lucifer stop abruptly, mid-tirade, and after a long moment, he relaxed, laughing.

Boyd, on the other hand, was still vibrating with anger at everything.

"Lucas, my boy," Lucifer had sauntered forward. "You are quite interesting."

Which was really quite the compliment from someone who bored so easily.

   


**IV.**

Sometime in the early-forties-- Boyd doesn't remember when, exactly, since he had been trying to handle three different departments because the previous department heads were _boring_ \--Lucifer took it upon himself to join the Third Reich on a whim. He considered it an amusing hobby, and during that period, Boyd would get odd messages from Germany, Austria, Denmark, anywhere Lucifer happened to be at the moment. 'Wish you were here' postcards in Dutch and German, telegrams about the weather, matchbooks and napkins from bars, and on one memorable occasion, an American propaganda film proclaiming Hitler to be the Antichrist.

Lucifer had found that endlessly amusing.

The messages would take weeks to arrive at times, and Lucifer hadn't seemed to care much that Boyd often saw him long before he'd get the trinkets. It's a tradition that's continued over the years, and now Boyd's permanent residence in Los Angeles (one floor below Lucifer's, of course) has an entire bedroom filled with things Lucifer sends him on whims, things he honestly has no idea how Lucifer manages to procure in the first place. Shirts with ridiculous slogans. Lewd statues and paintings. Pornographic movies of all kinds. More shot glasses than a man who drinks red wine could ever possibly use.

And then there was the keychain with a miniature bible that, when opened, sang aloud in a tinny voice, "I'm too sexy for my shirt, so sexy it hurts."

Lucifer had laughed for days over the expression on Boyd's face at that one.

He has priceless ming vases and ancient Roman artifacts, collects art that costs more money than he thought he'd see in his entire lifetime when he was young. Lucifer takes great pleasure in finding items that he knows Boyd would sooner work for the other side than display anywhere. Boyd suspects he spends entirely too much time with his boss when one morning, on finding a cartoon depicting a man renouncing God upon learning of a lack of alcohol in heaven, he finds himself laughing aloud.

He tapes the cartoon to the penthouse's bathroom mirror before he leaves.

Just before his ten a.m. conference call, Boyd finds a joke about St. Peter threatening to sue the devil taped to his phone, with the punch line being that St. Peter's never going to find a good lawyer in heaven. For the rest of the day, he and Lucifer one-up each other constantly with jokes about heaven and hell messengered back and forth between their offices.

By the end of the day, Boyd concedes loss since Lucifer clearly has a much wider knowledge of tasteless jokes than he himself does. Lucifer leans in his doorway, smirking, and tells him, "Lucas, you entertain me."

"Good," Boyd responds as he signs off on the last report he needed to finish. "I'd hate to be boring."

   


**V.**

"Sometimes," Boyd pinches the bridge of his nose in annoyance and tells his boss, Lucifer, prince of darkness, the ultimate evil, etc., "I think you're actually Peter Pan and you're pulling history's greatest con."

Lucifer merely arches an eyebrow, flinging a tennis ball at the wall next to Boyd's head and waiting for the ball to bounce back before repeating the move. "Are you calling me immature, Lucas?"

"Yes. Yes, I am."

"Alright," Lucifer manages a remarkably innocent grin, throwing the ball again. "Just checking."

Boyd manages to ignore the thumping on the wall two feet to the left of his head for a total of seven more thumps before, utterly irritated, he snakes his hand out and intercepts the ball, wordlessly dropping it in his desk drawer and slamming the drawer shut.

Lucifer smirks around a mock-pout and asks, "Can I have it back at the end of the school term, Mr. Boyd?"

   


**VI.**

"I have a job for you."

"Good," Boyd doesn't look up from the pile of paperwork he's attempting to get through. "The three dozen you've already given me for the week _were_ starting to bore me."

Lucifer raises an eyebrow. "Was that sarcasm, Lucas?"

"Of course not. There's nothing I look forward to more than being given the work of twenty-three men."

"Now, Lucas, you know that's an exaggeration," Lucifer manages to make himself sound mildly hurt at the insinuation, which is the only reason Boyd actually looks up from his paperwork. "I only have you doing the work of seventeen men, tops."

Rolling his eyes, Boyd abandons his paperwork and asks ever-so-eloquently, "What now?"

Lucifer's expression shifts subtly, and he's utterly serious, Boyd can see. "It's time."

Time. The impending apocalypse. Right. "Perfect."

"Sarcasm?"

"Not at all."

Lucifer favors him with a knowing smirk. "Very well, Lucas. I'll have someone else cover your departments for the time being."

Boyd supposes that's better than attempting to orchestrate the apocalypse _and_ run four departments at the same time; however, he has a feeling it won't feel much different than the amount of work he's currently responsible for. "Thank you."

"There are more interesting ways to thank me than with words."

"Yes, I suppose there are."

   


**VII.**

"Christina is _definitely_ your daughter."

Lucifer pauses his game and looks up from his X-box, wryly amused. Boyd doesn't bother to comment on the fact that he's been single-handedly attempting to ensure everything's on schedule for the most important battle of their lives, and Lucifer, as per usual, is playing _video games_. "You don't sound as if you mean that in a complimentary way."

"She's stubborn, illogical, and refuses to listen to reason when it interferes with her whims."

"Again, I fail to see the downside of this."

"Her whims are to be _good_."

"Oh. Yes, I see where that's a problem for us," Lucifer shakes his head and restarts his game, turning his attention back to ensuring a higher score than his previous attempt. "I have faith in you, Lucas. You'll turn her around. You're quite persuasive when you need something."

Boyd should be annoyed that it's a vague threat as much as a compliment.

Instead, he's ridiculously pleased with the praise.

Possibly, this is another sign of the impending apocalypse.


End file.
